


(you're) my loaded gun

by isawet



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, Modern Assassins, Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 02:04:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: A cracky romp through a Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU.





	(you're) my loaded gun

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been beta-ed. I'm sure it contains errors and I'm sorry, I'll fix them if I become aware of them.

“You said you were going to be supportive.”

Lexa’s frown becomes more pronounced from under her frankly ridiculously bug-eyed sunglasses. “I would be supportive if you were attending therapy for your own self-improvement.”

Clarke rolls her eyes as she turns into an empty parking space. “It’s really amazing how much condescension and judgment you can pack into seemingly neutral statements.”

Lexa slouches into her seat, and it’s a gesture so unlike her Clarke frowns out the windshield, the car in park but the engine still running. “I can’t make you,” she says, softening her tone. “I just--.” Her fingers flex on the steering wheel. “I don’t know what to do. If you know what to do--” and she hates how her voice betrays her, wavering and too honest, too pleading. She stops herself, steadies herself. “If you have a better suggestion, I’m listening.”

Lexa’s jaw flexes. She takes off the sunglasses and lays them carefully on the dash, touches Clarke’s knee just for a few seconds, her eyes gone grey and sad. “Okay,” she says.

Clarke turns off the car. They walk into marriage counseling together, hands not brushing, fingers not touching.

//

Once, in the beginning, in the good days, Clarke took Lexa bowling. It was back when she was an asshole because it surprised Lexa in a good way, in a way that made her look at Clarke sideways and admit softly on their second date that she’d never met anyone like Clarke in the whole wide world of her life. Not like now, when Clarke is an asshole because at least when Lexa is furious with her and spitting fire, Lexa is _there_. 

Anyway. Once, in the beginning, Clarke took Lexa bowling.

And not to a nice place, either. Plasticky faux-wood flooring that stuck to the soles of their shoes and warped alleys, the balls rattling unevenly towards the chipped pins. Everything smelled like sweat and beer; children shrieked from the tiny arcade in the corner at astonishing decibels. 

Lexa looked at her like she was an alien until Clarke bought her a rum and coke at the shitty bowling alley bar and dumped in a healthy dose of non-watery alcohol from the flask in her purse. “I think I might love you,” Lexa had said, draining the drink dry in just a few swallows. When Clarke kissed her she’d tasted like cheap vodka and cheaper rum and there were soda bubbles on their tongues.

//

Lexa goes stiff in the office again, her spine ramrod straight and her voice crisp and clean and stilted, her sentences stripped to bare bones to minimize how much she actually has to say. Clarke rambles a little, because it’s her go to when she’s nervous. Then the therapist asks about their sexual intimacy, and Clarke goes quiet with a small cough, feeling her cheeks flush. 

“I would--” Lexa starts, but Clarke beats her to it.

“A six.”

Lexa’s head snaps around; she looks square at Clarke for the first time since they got out of the car. “A _six_?”

Clarke meets her eyes. “You heard me.” She turns her body away from Lexa slightly, angling it towards the therapist, and speaks as though Lexa isn’t less than two feet away from her, fuming. “We haven’t--in weeks. And before that, weeks again. We work, we come home, we sort of talk at each other, we go to sleep. That’s when we bother lining up our schedules at all; we both travel a lot for work.”

The therapist talks for a bit about communication, about taking time to work on their relationship, some kind of analogy about cars and mechanics and preventative maintenance, and then a suggestion for effortful control. Clarke tunes it out--except for a brief flash of amusement that Lexa, of all people, needs to work on effortful control--because it’s so much more satisfying to feel Lexa next to her, almost boiling over beneath her carefully serene expression and her occasional nods to show she’s listening. She can feel Lexa’s eyes on her, the tension bunching in her muscles, the flex of her hand on her knee out of the corner of Clarke’s eye. 

“A low blow,” Lexa murmurs, as they exit the office and head for the elevator. There’s a few people already in it when the doors open, and Lexa crowds up against Clarke’s back, her lips brushing the curve of Clarke’s ear, her voice dark and graveled. “A dirty trick.”

Clarke shivers. “Is that emotion?” she murmurs back, her lips barely moving, her voice barely audible. “Careful sweet thing, you wouldn’t want your face to crack.”

Lexa’s hand curls around Clarke’s hip, pulling her back into Lexa’s body, her chin on Clarke’s shoulder as she presses a kiss just under Clarke’s jaw. Her fingers slip under Clarke’s shirt, finding bare skin, and Clarke is abruptly breathless, the other people in the elevator with them fading away. “A six,” Lexa repeats, and then steps away as the doors open with a ding. “A six.”

Clarke catches her breath, her heartbeat quickened, her face flushed. “I’m driving,” she says as they head towards the parking garage elevator, in an attempt to regain control. She’s absolutely planning on taking sidestreets, because the inefficiency makes Lexa’s eye twitch, and Clarke’s refusal to completely come to a halt at stop signs makes her sigh heavily. 

Then there’s a firm grip on her forearm and an arm around her waist and she’s steered gently but firmly into a single stall bathroom, the lock clicking before Clarke is shoved up against it. It’s clean for a public restroom but Clarke’s mouth is open to absolutely demand they relocate--even the backseat of the car--but then Lexa’s hand is under her shirt again, over her heart. “A six,” Lexa murmurs, and bites the hollow of Clarke’s throat, licking up from her collarbone to the underside of Clarke’s chin. “A _six_.”

This is my own fault, Clarke thinks idly, even as she feels her legs part, Lexa’s knee sliding between them and levering them open. She knows how Lexa is. She did it on purpose, even. She just wasn't expecting the intensity of the response. “And what?” her smart mouth spits back, because if she’s an instigating idiot at least she’s consistent. “You’re gonna eat me out in a bathroom stall to prove your sexual prowess?”

Lexa’s eyes are so dark they might as well be black. “Do not tempt me,” she warns, and drags her nails down Clarke’s sternum to the waistband of Clarke’s slacks, hard enough to leave red lines, hard enough it steals all the breath from Clarke’s lungs. She does it again and Clarke whimpers, then bites her own tongue to prevent a moan. “Enough emotion for you?”

Lexa kisses her, and Clarke isn’t so far gone that she doesn’t give as good as she gets, all teeth and tongue and bittersweet ache--Clarke remembers when they used to kiss soft and sweet and lingering, the rhythm messed up by their smiles. She bites Lexa’s lip hard; Lexa pulls her head to the side by her hair to sink her teeth into Clarke’s throat again. “If you rip my shirt,” Clarke pants harshly, only barely appeased by the fact Lexa’s breathing just as hard. “I’ll leave.” The threat makes Clarke’s stomach flip.

Lexa’s eyes flash. Her hands disappear from Clarke’s waist and her hair, then unbuttons Clarke’s slacks, yanking them down as far they’ll go, which isn’t far enough, judging by her snarl. Clarke laughs, hard edged and almost mocking--and cut off when Lexa manages to get her hand into Clarke’s pants anway. “Six,” Lexa mutters again, and then her long clever fingers are under Clarke’s underwear and Clarke leans her head back against the door, her eyes closed. 

She remembers Spain, their honeymoon. Her leg up over Lexa’s shoulder on a balcony while the sun dipped low over the sparkling ocean. Plum wine kisses and champagne soaked strawberries and hand feeding each other on the beach. What Lexa’s skin looked like sun-kissed, the bow of her mouth when she laughed.

Clarke forces her eyes open. Stay in the here and now, she thinks, and pulls Lexa closer to muffle her noises into Lexa’s hard biting mouth. 

//

“Was it good, at least?”

Clarke considers the question. “It was… satisfying. During, definitely.”

Raven makes a thoughtful noise over the comms. “But after?”

Clarke swallows. The silent car ride home, standing in front of the stove making grilled cheese sandwiches while Lexa showered. Lexa’s quiet mutter about going to the office; Clarke going to bed alone. “Kind of a bummer.”

Raven sighs. “You know what I’m going to say--hold on. On the move.”

“I see him.” Clarke adjusts the scope atop her rifle. “And I do,” she adds, making a few last minor adjustments. “Know what you’re going to say.”

“And yet, here we are again. You said if the counseling didn’t work you’d--”

The rifle roars against Clarke’s cheek, kicks hard against her shoulder. Later, she’ll feel it when she moves, the ache of well-use. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Bitch.” Clarke waits, counting her inhales and exhales and keeping her heartrate low and calm. There’s a click, and then two short beeps. “Confirmed,” Raven says in her ear. “Head to extraction point.”

Clarke packs her equipment, strips her gloves off, slings the riflecase over her shoulder. She remembers: a date where they both dressed up fancy and went to a fancy restaurant and Clarke cracked jokes about their tiny fancy forks. Lexa ordered champagne and dessert and for a second, bubbles fizzing on her tongue and the candle on the table burning low, she--she thought Lexa was going to propose. Instead Lexa had kissed her with dark eyes and raspberry tinted lips and took her home, but Clarke remembers that moment. Because she’d thought, she’d realized: _I’m going to say yes_.

Raven opens the line again while Clarke is driving back to the office, her eyes gritty tired and a headache from the pressurized airplane air. “I remember when you were happy to be home.”

Clarke sighs, pressing a thumb to the furrow in her brow. “Not now, Reyes.”

“I’m the voice in your ear,” Raven reminds her. “The Jiminy to your Cricket.”

“You help me kill people.”

“I’m your only friend. And we only like each other about three quarters of the time.”

Clarke has no retort to that, which is kind of depressing. 

“You’re unhappy in your marriage.”

Clarke flexes her jaw. “I love Lexa. I won’t leave her.”

Raven sighs. “This is my due diligence; I won’t bring it up again. Take the weekend, I’m still sorting through contracts. Come in Monday and we’ll make our picks.”

//

Clarke goes straight home. She’s been… lingering, lately, at the office. But she and Raven have always been very carefully professional, if friendly-teasing-professional, and things must be in an obviously bad way for her to breach their boundaries. 

She’s surprised to see Lexa’s car in the driveway. She stops in the driveway, just long enough for the car to ping and ding under the hood, cooling down while she takes deep breaths. She goes in quiet, the door barely creaking (the house they picked out together, so many more rooms than they really needed and Clarke had wavered about it, worried Lexa wanted _more_. Worried she wanted kids.)

Lexa isn’t in the entryway or the living room or the kitchen, but her bag is on the dining table and her keys are on the kitchen counter, her shoes against the wall near the front closet. Clarke wanders down the hall, looking at the framed pictures on the wall. Her father, young and alive and smiling big, Lexa and her sister, a few framed prints of shots Clarke took herself. 

Lexa is in the study, her back to Clarke. Her blazer is across the back of the office chair but she’s sitting on the floor, her legs folded up under her. “You’re ruffled,” Clarke says, surprised.

Lexa jerks. A framed picture clatters from her lap onto the hardwood floor. “You’re home early,” she recovers. Then she frowns. “What do you mean, ‘ruffled’?”

Clarke gestures at her. “No, I just meant…” Lexa’s hair is slightly mussed, her makeup has been wiped away, her shirt half unbuttoned. She looks like she came home, started getting changed after work, and then--gotten distracted. Clarke picks up the picture on the floor and feels the breath punch out of her chest. 

It’s their wedding day.

“Baby,” Clarke says, and it’s Lexa’s turn to jolt. 

“You haven’t said that in a long time.”

“Oh.” Lexa is right, Clarke realizes, when was the last time… she doesn’t remember. It started as a joke, because it make Lexa roll her eyes and mutter uncomplimentary things about infantilization of the female sexuality. It kept going because it was something Clarke would say softly, just for Lexa; kept going because Clarke realized that maybe no one had ever said anything softly just for Lexa before. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?” Lexa takes the picture from her, her fingertip touching their frozen smiles, the train of Clarke’s dress. They’d both worn summer dresses, neither white. Signed the papers at the courthouse with Lexa’s sister as their witness; she’d taken that very picture with her iphone, shaken Clarke’s hand, bumped Lexa’s shoulder with her own, and roared off on her motorcycle. They’d gone through a McDonald’s drive-thru on their way to the airport, and that had been their wedding night, cramped economy class seats and cricked necks from slumping on each other’s shoulders. 

Clarke shrugs. At this point, what doesn’t she have to be sorry for. “I,” she starts, and then fumbles, unsure about what to say, what to do. If she should risk a gentle touch to Lexa’s shoulder. This is the most civil they’ve been to each other in weeks. “I was thinking about making dinner.”

Lexa nods. “Let me change; I’ll join you.”

Clarke bristles. She’s no Susie Homemaker but-- “I think I can handle a stirfry without backup.”

Lexa hesitates, her hands pausing where they’d started to reach for the photo. They drop back to her sides. “Of course,” she says stiffly. “My apologies.”

Clarke feels the flush of uncertainty. “You could,” she says, before she can talk herself out of it, “handle dessert?”

Lexa doesn’t smile, exactly, but her eyes soften around the corners. “I’ll see if I can find the bundt cake pan.”

Clarke absolutely hates bundt cake. It’s the only thing Lexa knows how to bake; she used to make it every year on Clarke’s birthday. This past year they were both out of town: Lexa presented a paper to a conference, Clarke had a celebratory vodka from the hotel minibar and then gone downstairs to fatally poison a business mogul’s martini. “I’d like that,” she says, and stays there while Lexa leaves, looking down at their smiling faces in the photograph.

She puts it back on the desk, carefully straightening the frame just so. 

//

She’s just dumped a plateful of cubed tofu into the skillet, withdrawing to a safe distance as the oil hisses and pops to poke at the mess of assorted vegetables with a wooden spoon, when she hears Lexa’s phone go off. She turns the stove fan down. “Lexa! Your phone.”

Lexa is at the kitchen island, elbow deep in some kind of dough Clarke is going to have to pretend she doesn’t hate later. This one features orange peels, which has already started Clarke down a path of despair. She hates baked fruit. “Yes,” Lexa says, “I’m not deaf; I hear it.”

“Then answer it,” Clarke mutters, and sullenly stirs the tofu around the pan. She hears Lexa cross to the sink, and the spray of the water as she washes her hands. 

“You didn’t put out new towels.”

“I didn’t even know we had kitchen towels,” Clarke responds, frowning at the stirfry. There’s way too much water at the bottom. And Clarke had checked that number, a quick flash of her gaze to the lit up screen of Lexa’s sleek mobile. Clarke uses a flip phone; it’s more secure, and Raven can’t hack it to read her texts for mocking material. 

“Of course you didn’t,” she hears Lexa grumble, and then her footsteps recede, her voice clearly aimed at her phone. “Hello?” It’s her work, Clarke knows. She used to come back in the room timidly, anxiously, kiss Clarke deeply goodbye and bring her flowers in the morning as an apology. Clarke’s never liked flowers; she’d never gotten the nerve up to tell Lexa so but Lexa must have guessed at some point: she hasn’t gotten flowers in months. 

In her pocket, her flip phone buzzes. She checks it with one hand: Raven. 

_emergency call big $$. ?_

Clarke frowns. She shoots a look at the hallway where Lexa had disappeared, probably to take her call in the study. Then she turns the burner off. Why should she sit here eating vegan teriyaki tofu and smelling a bundt cake she doesn’t want to eat while Lexa goes to work? 

_eta 20_ she texts Raven.

Lexa re-enters the room, pausing to plug her phone back into the charger on the counter. “Work,” she explains simply, and rolls up her sleeves to start kneading the dough again. Clarke isn’t an expert but she’s pretty sure you’re not supposed to knead cake dough. No one on the food network ever kneads their cake dough. 

Clarke nods. “Me too. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

Lexa stares at her. “You’re… leaving?”

Clarke blinks. “You’re… not?”

“You said you were making dinner,” Lexa says, accusatory. “I thought--” she stops. “Nevermind.”

“Lexa--”

“Nevermind,” Lexa repeats. The dough makes a wet heavy noise when she throws it into the trash. “I’ll see you whenever you get back.”

“I’m not sure when--”

“I heard you,” Lexa snaps, and storms down the hall. She doesn’t slam the door but she sure doesn’t ease it shut.

Clarke dumps the stirfry into the trash, right over Lexa’s dough. After a discreet look up the hall, she drops the bundt cake pan in on top of all of it. Grabs her go-bag from the front closet and takes the trash out to the curb on her way to the car. 

//

“I think you’re right,” she says abruptly, while Raven is printing their boarding passes and checking boxes on her inventory app, her nail clicking against the screen of the tablet. 

“Obviously,” Raven replies, without looking up. “What about?”

“Lexa. My marriage.”

Raven’s fingers stop moving. “I’m sorry,” she says, after a long pause.

Clarke stares down at her own tablet, reviewing the dossier and their plan, the cover stories. She swallows. “Thanks.”

“We’ll go out, after,” Raven offers. “Divorce drinks.”

Clarke blinks, confused. “Why would I get a divorce?”

Raven drops the tablet to gawk at her. “Are you--are you serious?” Her eyes narrow. “Are you _Catholic_?”

“I made a promise,” Clarke insists, over Raven’s disbelieving groans. “I’m not walking away because things have gotten bad. I think--I found these marriage retreats online--”

Raven puts on a large pair of headphones and flicks a switch on the side. “I can’t hear you,” she tells Clarke, her voice too loud. “I refuse to hear you. And I will not start hearing you until the plane has landed.”

Clarke lifts up one headphone. “You know we have to go through security, right?”

“Fuck you,” Raven says clearly, and blasts techno music all the way to the airport.

 

Clarke meditates on the plane. She goes through the plan, point by point. She thinks about--not quitting. But. Maybe a vacation. Somewhere with beaches, because Lexa loves the water and Clarke loves watching Lexa’s smile light up her face. Maybe one of the retreats that’s at a spa in the tropics; if there’s one thing they don’t hurt for it’s money. Maybe a therapy session where she doesn’t go in with the secret mission of getting spiteful hatesex.

Raven elbows her as their descent begins. “Wake up.”

“I’m meditating,” Clarke mumbles, surreptitiously wiping some drool away from her mouth. “Are you talking to me again?”

“About the job. I mean it. We’re… friendly, okay? And I owe you one. But not enough to listen to you wax pathetically about your failing marriage. You stay with her, you stay quiet with me about it.” Raven hands her a small flask. “Capice?”

“Capice,” Clarke agrees, and shoots back the liquor. 

//

“Jublanksi,” Clarke says, “is a stupid name.”

“You’re just mad you can’t spell it.”

Clarke adjusts the commpiece hidden in her ear and turns to give the closest security camera the finger. Raven laughs in her ear. Ahead of her, the mark gets into an ATV. “The dust is never going to get out of my shoes,” Clarke complains, spinning the keys to her own ATV around two fingers. “You sure about the destination?”

Raven makes a highly offended noise. “Am I sure? Am _I_ , am I _sure_? Am I--”

Clarke considers dunking her earpiece in her water bottle. 

 

She arrives at the waypoint, leaving the vehicle under a camouflaged tarp, and hikes up a short ridge. The ledge is right where Raven said it would be, and the sun is just right: no glare against her eyes and a pleasant cooling breeze to take the bite out of the heat. She lays out her rifle and wriggles to the edge on her belly, pillowing her cheek on her arm and watching the clouds roll shadows across the scrubby desert plants. “ETA?”

“Ten minutes,” Raven estimates. “Fifteen at the most. You wanna get a little more set-up?”

Clarke shoves a handful of trail mix, more chocolate than anything else, into her mouth. “You know I like to play it close.”

Raven mutters something uncomplimentary and goes silent. It’s more of a token protest of Clarke’s style than a genuine gripe; they’ve worked together long enough by now that she knows how Clarke operates. And, Clarke thinks, as her eyes catch an odd glint in a hill to her left, there’s a reason why the higher ups haven’t issued ultimatums. She’s good at what she does, and she knows the flash of a rifle scope when she sees one. “Raven. At my nine.”

“On it,” Raven says. “Too small for a satellite pick up, this isn’t a sci-fi flick. Withdraw?”

“No.” Clarke frowns, tapping her fingers in the dirt. “Maybe I’m not the only one who can’t spell this idiot’s name.”

“Two different people put a hit on this guy and didn’t realize? That’s… that’s never happened to me before.”

“First time for everything,” Clarke says cheerfully. “I’m not worried about it.” She pats the zip duffel case she’d lugged up the ridge and mentally apologizes for all the very rude things she thought at it while she staggered under its weight. “I’m thinking about sending a little present to the competition.”

“Your call,” Raven says. “Do we think he’s stupid enough to ignore a miniature explosion?”

Clarke does some quick mental trigonometry. “I’ll hit him before he’s in the other guy’s sweet spot.”

“Well buckle up, because he’s entering the zone.”

Clarke can see it, the dust trail as he gets closer and closer. She snugs her rifle against her shoulder and lays her cheek against the sunwarm metal. Last little tweak of the scope and check of the instruments; she hums a little song while she she counts out the steady beat of her pulse. “ATV-ing,” she muses absently, “is a stupid fucking hobby.” 

She shoots between heartbeats. She knows as soon as she squeezes the trigger it’s a good hit, and only spares a little of her attention to confirming the kill. The rest of her is focused on loading the grenade launcher. She sees the bullet hit the rock beside her before she hears its high pitched whistle, and she’s throwing herself sideways onto the ground before she’s even fully processed what’s happened. “Shit!”

“What’s happening?”

“He’s shooting at me,” Clarke grunts, scrabbling to fire a grenade towards the other assassin. “Not the mark, the other guy.” The booming roar echoes in the small valley, bouncing off the hills. The resulting explosion kicks up a dust cloud that’s far too big for Clarke’s liking. Her window of escape before detection just got smaller. “I’m going to see if I got him.”

“That’s idiotic,” Raven says, but doesn’t try to talk Clarke out of it. “I’ll monitor local law enforcement.”

Clarke makes a noise of acknowledgment. She leaves the grenade launcher and the rifle behind; they’re too big and too bulky, they’d slow her down. There’s nothing to tie her to them anyway. She stays as low as she can, shoving her bright hair under a hat as she scrambles around in her clompy hiking boots. She’s breathing hard by the time she makes it to ground zero, hooking a cheap facemask around her ears to filter out the worst of the dust in the air. 

She creeps towards the center of the small crater she made, the rocks crunching under her steps. She finds the rifle, mostly intact, lying scorched on the ground; there’s boot tracks leading away. “Crap,” she mutters. “I didn’t get him.”

“Learn anything?”

“Short,” Clarke reports, peering at the tracks. “Small feet, small guy--”

A bullet screams through the air, punching through the brim of Clarke’s hat and blowing it clean off her head. 

“Fuck!” For the second time in less than an hour, Clarke eats shit, flinging herself down at the ground hard enough to leave bruises. She yanks the mask off her face, orienting herself. There’s no cover here--whatever there was Clarke herself had destroyed with the grenades. Her bright blonde hair and her fair skin and no cover; this is a clusterfuck Clarke is unlikely to walk away from. “I’m blown,” she says, her tone an apologetic goodbye to her partner. Her contingency plans were put in place a long time ago; she hopes Lexa won’t be upset their last conversation was a fight. 

She squeezes her eyes, asks the universe to ensure the shot is true and quick and clean, and waits.

 

“Clarke?” Raven asks, an indeterminable amount of time later. “You still kicking?

Clarke opens her eyes. “Yeah,” she says, surprised. 

“Huh. Any idea why?”

Clarke stands, cautious. “Not a clue.”

“The cops think it’s kids with fireworks, you’ve got a little bit of time.”

“Mm.” There’s a small lean-to, just a few yards out from the carnage, and Clarke hefts the cover over to look inside. A couple of raisins, a handgun with print-resistant grip. A single latex glove. A sleeping roll. “He’s been here a while.” She kicks the sleeping roll over and-- “Hold on.” There’s something, just there. A little bit of colored cardboard. No, a matchbook. Clarke picks it up with gloved fingers, dusting it off. 

It’s not a generic matchbook, she realizes, with dawning horror. It’s an incense matchbook, and Clarke doesn’t need to read the label to recognize the scent: _Balsam Fir_. Clarke knows it because she buys a pack every year for Lexa’s birthday, even this year, and--, her fingernail under the flap and the sudden flush of nausea all through her body. Just there, in blue ballpoint ink. A heart drawn in Clarke’s own hand.

 

She runs down the hill, ignoring all stealth. “Raven,” she pants. “I need the fastest route home.”

“What? Clarke you haven’t even confirmed the kill yet--you’re supposed to meet a representative in two days--”

“Raven!”

“Your cover,” Raven argues.

“I’m leaving,” Clarke snaps. It takes her three tries to get her shaking fumbling fingers to fit the keys into the ignition. “Help me or shut the hell up.” The engine roars to life and she stomps her foot on the gas. “Raven!”

The comm clicks. “Get to the airport, your tickets will be waiting. I’ll handle the rest of the job. And we _will_ talk about this.”

Clarke yanks the comm out of her ear and lets it fall. 

Lexa. The other shooter was Lexa.

//

Clarke doesn’t sleep a wink on her flight. She chews her nails down to the quick; her knee jumps without pause even after the person sitting next to her makes a few pointed remarks. She can’t focus enough to remember where she parked her car so she books a rental. She draws lines between Lexa’s behaviour and the obvious reasons in her head: long work breaks, vague avoidance of precise details of what she’s actually doing, a phone with a text and browsing history that’s just a hair too clean. So many of the tells lined up too neatly with Clarke’s own; they’ve inadvertently been covering for each other while using each other as cover.

 

She cruises onto her home street at one in the morning, the headlights turned off. She parks on the street instead of the driveway. 

The lights are on, inside the house. The porchlight is dark, though, and there’s a wreath on the door that wasn’t there when Clarke left. A little message meant as a dig: _I beat you home_.

Clarke eases her key into the lock, her heartrate too fast and her head too messy. Maybe this is a good thing, she thinks. Maybe… maybe they can be honest with each other, maybe they can start over. Maybe Lexa is excited to bond with Clarke over a shared professional interest.

Lexa emerges from a shadow to grab Clarke by the throat and slam her against the wall. Maybe not, Clarke thinks. “Hi honey,” she chokes out, fingers scrabbling at Lexa’s wrist. “I’m home.”

“You threw away my bundt cake pan,” Lexa says, and tightens her grip. 

Clarke’s eyes narrow. “Babe,” she says, and punches Lexa so hard in the kidney Lexa drops her, curling up defensively and stumbling backwards with a curse. “Your bundt cake fucking sucks.”

She reaches into a decorative vase on the table and pulls out a pistol smaller than her palm, aiming it at the floor just in front of Lexa’s feet. “Let’s talk about this like mature professionals. Who are also married.”

Lexa glares at her. “You tried to kill me.”

“I didn’t know it was you,” Clarke protests. “I thought you were some guy!”

“Sexist,” Lexa accuses.

“I know,” Clarke snipes back. “We can work on my internal biases some other time, don’t you think? You shot first, anyway.”

Lexa’s glare intensifies.

“Do you really think,” Clarke says, flicking the safety back on and lowering the gun to hang harmlessly by her side, “that I would want to kill you?” Her voice breaks on the last word.

Lexa hesitates. Her fighting stance relaxes. “No,” she says quietly. “Clarke, I--” she stops, shaking her head.

“You knew it was me,” Clarke says. “That second shot, when you missed.”

Lexa’s lips thin. “I was aiming on the run.”

“You missed,” Clarke repeats, and can’t keep _all_ the smugness out of her tone (Clarke herself hasn’t missed a shot in six years). She takes a steadying breath. “But that isn’t the point. The point is after you missed: you had me. You could have killed me.”

“I didn’t,” Lexa scowls, and she doesn’t have to sound so regretful about it.

“Because you knew it was me?”

Lexa is silent.

“I guess you’re just a bad shot, that’s okay, no shame--”

“Yes,” Lexa snaps, and then her tone changes on a dime, going secret-soft. “I had my finger on the trigger, but you--you looked up. I saw you. And I couldn’t.”

“That’s not nothing,” Clarke says, and if hope isn’t the most dangerous thing in the world, because she drops all her situational awareness in favor of listening for that waver in Lexa’s voice, the tremble in her fingers. “I still love--”

A red dot appears above Lexa’s heart; Lexa sees it reflected in the hallway mirror at the same time Clarke does, even as Clarke reaches out a hand she’s throwing herself sideways, tipping the table over and crouching behind it. Her eyes harden. “You played me,” she snarls, yanking up one leg of her slacks to pull a bowie knife from its sheath. “To hold me in position, I can’t believe--”

“It’s not me,” Clarke protests, crouching low and staying out of sight of the windows. “I wouldn’t--” She dodges; the knife slams into the plaster exactly where her head used to be. “Hey!”

“Fool me once,” Lexa says, and snaps the table leg off. Behind her, a shape looms in the window. 

Clarke fires at it without thinking, sending a cascade of shattering glass to fall on Lexa’s head. It’s not until she sees the betrayed look in Lexa’s eyes that she realizes what it looked like. “Wait,” she yelps, pointing out the window. “I wasn’t shooting at you, there’s--just look over there!”

Lexa’s look turns to disbelief. “You can’t possibly believe I’m going to fall for that.” She closes the distance between them and aims a blow at Clarke’s left knee with her makeshift club; Clarke turns her leg and takes it on the outside of her thigh. It hurts like a bitch and it’ll leave her limping, but it saves her from a shattered kneecap. 

“Just,” she grunts, blocking a second blow with her arm and abruptly losing all feeling below her elbow as Lexa hits a bundle of nerves just right, “let--me--” Lexa twists, fluid like water and faster than she has any right to be; Clarke’s no slouch at hand-to-hand but she prefers distance combat and she knows when she’s outmatched. She switches tactics: slams a dirty blow into Lexa’s kidneys again, the same spot she’d hit before. Lexa hisses, withdrawing in pain, and Clarke slumps against the wall, breathing hard. “Let me explain,” she tries again.

“Shut up,” Lexa snaps.

Clarke straightens in indignation. “ _You_ shut up--”

Lexa raises a hand, cutting her off. Her head is cocked. “Do you hear that?”

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Speaking of things you can’t expect me to fall for--”

Their living room explodes.

 

Clarke comes back to herself on a bed of splinters. She groans, then coughs. “Ow.” Then she remembers. “Shit.” There’s debris on her chest that she thinks might have used to be the couch upholstery. She shoves it away with a groan. “I liked that couch.” There had been an issue with the moving company; they’d dragged themselves to IKEA and spent the first three days in their new house with that couch as their only furniture. Lexa had been the one who wanted to keep it, even though even Clarke admitted it was ugly as fuck. Of the two of them, Lexa is the secret sentimental. “Lexa?”

She coughs again, waving a hand around in a useless effort to clear some of the dust from the air. There’s a gaping hole in the wall about three feet from their front door, and she can see into the yard and the street outside. She squints, but there are no masked men flying in on cables holding automatic weapons. “A matter of time,” she mutters darkly to herself, and stumbles down the hall, bracing herself on the wall as she trips over debris. She yanks open the closet door, and then stomps a booted foot down into the floorboards, smashing into a hidden compartment below. She pulls out the black duffel bag inside and slings it over her shoulder. “Lexa!” she shouts again, making her way back to the kitchen.

A man with an automatic rifle is waiting for her. “Typical,” Clarke says to the universe, and throws the fruit bowl at his head. She nails him right in the temple and he drops with a spray of bullets and pink gala apples. A body crashes into Clarke, tackling her to the ground. “Get off,” Clarke snaps. “He couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn.”

“He hit the tile backsplash,” Lexa says, sounding offended. She slides off Clarke and to her feet, and kicks the unconscious man in the crotch. “That was a thousand dollars!”

Clarke stands much less gracefully, dusting off her ass. Trust Lexa to get pissy about the backsplash when there’s a crater where their front wall used to be. “Where the hell have you been?”

Lexa points: there are three more unconscious men lying sprawled in the foyer. “They came in after you.”

Clarke squints. There’s a suspiciously familiar lump of warped teflon lying in front of the fireplace. “Is that your bundt cake pan? Did you go through the trash to find your bundt cake pan after I left?”

“They liked it just as much as you do,” Lexa snipes. 

“You’re fucking nuts,” Clarke tells her, because her throat hurts, her back hurts, she’s bleeding from a dozen small cuts, her house has exploded, she still can’t feel her left arm, and her assassin neurotic wife knocked out six home invaders with a baking utensil in a staggering act of passive aggression without Clarke even noticing. “Do you believe I didn’t set this all up as an elaborate ruse to murder you yet?”

“Not entirely,” Lexa says, but it’s the same tone she uses when she says she doesn’t care if their outfits are complementary when they go out to dinner. “I’m parked around back.”

Clarke grabs her bag off the ground. “Let’s go.”

//

Lexa fishtails the car onto the freeway, barreling through four lane changes with a hand on the horn and an eye on the rearview mirror. Clarke clutches at her seatbelt, her body twisted to look out the back windshield. “I think we’re okay.”

Lexa snorts. “Forgive me if I--”

“Oh shut up.” Clarke flops back into her seat, rubbing at her forehead. They don’t know who’s sold them out; every safehouse they have has been burned, every contact unable to be trusted. “You can be pissy about it all you like but you know I’m good at this. Just as good as you.”

“No one’s as good as me.”

Clarke scoffs. “Sorry, who came out a winner in the Jublanksi contract? I think it was me. I definitely remember it being me.”

Lexa is silent for a second, absorbing the blow. “I wouldn’t trust your memory too much,” she counters, “since you ‘forgot’ your mother was alive.”

Clarke should know better than to respond; it’s clear Lexa had no retort for her professionally, so she switched tracks. It should be childish, amateurish. It shouldn’t ruffle Clarke’s carefully maintained feathers, because she’s a professional, she’s the best. Nothing ruffles her.

“I’ll have you know,” she starts furiously, and Lexa rolls her eyes.

“Here we go.”

“I didn’t _forget_. She came in, unannounced, crashing our first anniversary dinner, and if she’d called first--”

“You would have explained to her that you had told your then-fiancė she died in a tragic boating accident when you were sixteen and that’s why she couldn’t attend our wedding?”

It wasn’t Clarke’s finest cover story, she has to admit. “That one’s on you, honestly. ‘Boating accident’. I can’t believe you fell for that.”

Lexa’s eyes narrow. “Anya isn’t my sister. If you want to get into ridiculous things we believed about each other, that takes the cake.”

Clarke blinks. “No way, that’s--you’re not serious.”

“Clarke,” Lexa says, faux-patient and her condescension sickly-sweet. “Anya is Asian.”

“I thought you were sensitive about it,” Clarke hisses, feeling embarrassment flush hot in her cheeks. “I didn’t want to trigger an identity crisis!”

Lexa tears her eyes away from aggressively tailgating the Nissan Ultima in front of them to give Clarke an incredulous look. “I sunburn in the winter.”

“Anya was our witness! Is this why she never liked me? You made some stranger pretend to be your sister for parties? That’s way over the line. We vacationed with her! I asked a _stranger_ for her blessing before I proposed??”

“She’s not a stranger,” Lexa says, sounding slightly offended. “You’re the one who put metal chopsticks on our wedding registry.”

“I was trying to honor your heritage!”

“I’m Australian,” Lexa informs her, and Clarke makes an enraged noise in her throat.

“When my mom showed up,” she says, fighting to keep her voice even and not quite succeeding, “I came clean. I told you that we’d fought, we’d been estranged. I told you that I’d lied about her dying, I apologized for marring our wedding day with untruths. And you--” And Lexa had forgiven her. Held her when Clarke talked about her dad with a hitching voice and wet eyes. Was the big spoon when Clarke felt shaky and yielded control when they’d made love three hours later, in the dark with shuddery breaths and careful hands. 

“I said I understood,” Lexa says, in the present.

“You were lying,” Clarke says coldly. “Everything was a lie.”

Lexa sucks in a breath. “Not everything.” Her tone is what does it; Clarke’s vision narrowing and going hazy with rage, because Lexa… Lexa sounded hurt. And she has no goddamn right to be.

“I didn’t lie to you _because_ I loved you,” Clarke snaps, her patience breaking. “Because I wanted what we had to be real! What’s _your_ excuse for lying to me?”

Lexa is silent for a long dragging moment, her fingers white on the steering wheel. Clarke can hear the plastic creaking. “The same as yours: because I loved you. Because I thought if you knew the truth you would leave.”

Clarke slumps, all her righteous fury gone just as fast as it had come. “Well,” she says, and can’t think of anything to say, Lexa’s silence unbelievably loud beside her. She watches the billboards go by through the window. _Loved_ , the both of them had said. Past tense.

Lexa pulls into a the parking lot of a cheap motel, less than a hundred feet from the highway. “We should stop for the night.”

Clarke nods, but Lexa doesn’t get out of the car, turning the engine off and staring straight ahead. Clarke can hear her breathing, measured and even, see Lexa’s throat working out of the corner of her eye. It had been the same, Clarke thinks, when they had first started dating. When everything was new and she was learning Lexa’s tells--except they weren’t, really, were they? How much of it was carefully constructed, how much of _them_ , the happiest Clarke has ever been--how much of it was Lexa playing a role?

“Are you hungr--”

“I think we should get a divorce.”

They speak at the same time. Lexa jerks, turning her body to face Clarke. “What?”

Clarke stares out the windshield, the crooked _Vacancy_ letters, the advertisement for free wireless internet. “I think we should get a divorce, when this is over.” She shrugs. “You know, if we survive.” She stays like that, looking at the peeling paint and the dingy windows and the chipped wooden railings. The car rocks, the door slamming as Lexa leaves without another word. 

Clarke’s eyes are burning, which is weird. She’s pretty sure she’s been blinking. She gets out of the car, locks it behind her. Hitches her bag up on her shoulder and goes into the office to ask for a room with two beds.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think and I'm on tumblr @ sunspill


End file.
